"I have been asked to develop two days training courses on : Company culture. Basically I know what the company culture means, but what to put in two days? Any suggestion about content or/and interactie activities? It should be open course for middle managers. Thanks in advance. Best Regards. Robert"

Corporate culture is comprised of its history and values. Here are some
suggestions:

1. Before you begin building a course on company culture - ask company
leadership how they define the current and target culture - what kind of
company culture do they think they have? what kind of company culture do
they want? If they have trouble answering these questions, imagine how much
trouble you will have trying to design and teach a course on company culture
. . .
2. The company vision, mission, goals and strategies are part of the
company culture. I would ask a senior executive to explain how they were
developed and what they mean.
3. Learning the company history can convey a little bit of where the
company came from, and how it was shaped. I would ask a senior executive to
explain the company history, including key milestones, and what they
meant/mean to the company.
4. If the company does not have a set of corporate values in place, then
you could help formalize their development. If the company already a set of
values, then that should be a section of the course
5. Learning what it takes to succeed in the company is an important
component of culture - I have invited senior executives (and rising stars)
talk about how they entered the company, and trace their career paths within
the company.
6. I like the books ""Corporate Cultures"" and ""The New Corporate
Cultures"" by Deal and Kennedy as reference materials. They talk about rites
and rituals of corporate culture.
7. They also talk about ""heroes"" as part of the culture - in some cases
this may include company founders, great sales people, key inventors or
innovaters. Who in the company is remembered and what did they do?

Regarding your question about including middle managers - who was the
original target audience for the class?

The purpose of training is build capability. What is the performance outcome the requestor wants? Sounds to me like its just some sort of information giving event about your company's ""culture"" which translates into what management would like people to believe! I would sit down with the person asking for the training and ask them what is the behavior that they have seen that has led to this request, what do they want changed, and then figure out how to change it. The resultant course probably has nothing to do with teaching about company culture!
Good luck!!
Marguerite

Hi, Robert,
The company culture should be THE REAL LIVING of the company values and the outcome should be the value-based-behaviour of each employee. To be more specific you can develop behavioural STANDARDS for dealing with external or internal customers.

I use the phrase 'the way we do things here' as a loose definition of culture. As others have mentioned, identifying the gap between the current way things are done (behaviours) and what is desired is the starting point and may require various staff surveys and meetings with managers to get clear.

As 2 seoparate activities, I would include getting the participants to identify the things in the organistion and in their specific areas that hold the organisation in it's existing culture and things that are being done or could be done to influence the organsiatison towards the desired culture (performance levers). Examples would be the role of new employee orientation, lack of standards or inconsistant application of ramifications for not meeting standards, managers leading or not leading by example, how are people acknowledged for behaving in ways that move towards the desired culture, what pressure could be applied to people not behaving in the desired ways to shift their behaviour.

I would also do an activity having the participants identify what benefits there will be for them personally for spending time and energy working on changing the behaviours (what's in it for me). You could also consider how to communicate these benefits on a regular basis through success stories in company newsletters etc

These activities will help the managers to understand the crucial role they play in identifying and removing barriers preventing change as well as consistently applying tactics that will help the organsiation move towards it's desired culture AND the benefit to them personally in doing these things.